New York City as we know it, is a city that is full of culture, history, and diversity. Known as the capital of the world, some of the most influential aspects of this city often go unappreciated. The vibrant diversity of the city and its surroundings are abundant, from the busy financial district of Wall Street, to the calming nature trails located in Central Park, to even the vast beaches of Staten Island. Studded not only with skyscrapers but also vibrant neighborhoods, New York is definitely a wonder that deserves appreciation and needs to be reflected through different angles. With this project, we want to portray the inner workings of New York by showing people a different side of New York. Times Square and the Statue of Liberty are familiar to viewers across the globe, but as New Yorkers, there is much more to the city than just these landmarks.

In order to fully capture the essence of the city, we plan to focus on the different types of architecture present, nature in parks and other recreational sites, as well as street photography, capturing the people and the street environment. At its core, New York City is a culmination of all the people that live here. Everything around the city reflects our lifestyles and the things that we value. This was the inspiration for using an unconventional approach of taking photos of New York from various different mediums to accurately represent “Life Through the Eyes of New York”. We plan on using three different mediums; instant film, professional camera, and cell phone camera; to look at the city through different “lenses”.

We intend to use the instant film to capture moments regarding the people of New York City. We want to photograph human moments because we feel that these are the most powerful in terms of capturing the essence of everyday New York. It’s the core of everything in the city, and so we felt it important to allocate a portion of our project for this purpose. We feel that an instant camera would be appropriate for this purpose because they are designed to capture unreplicatable moments and snapshot them. The goal is to capture as many as what Henri Cartier-Bresson describes as “decisive moments” as possible.

The professional, EOS 70D Canon Camera, will be used to take pictures with the power to influence and connect. Since this camera allows us to take photos of optimal quality, we can highlight certain details in our photos and somewhat dictate what the viewer’s impression of the photo will be. We plan on each of these photos having a clearly-defined punctum that tells our viewers something meaningful, and we can achieve this through multiple takes and photo editing. 

Lastly, the photos taken by the iPhone7 plus will capture raw, unedited moments in the city. The subjects are the scenic views that are typically underappreciated. It includes the architecture and nature that cannot be found elsewhere. This is to help our viewers appreciate New York City as a work of art. While we want our viewers to see the city through the lenses of native New Yorkers, we also want them to make their own interpretations, even if they’ve never been to some parts of the city before.

Collectively, we hope these images make up a holistic view of New York and our audience takes a multifaceted approach to it. We hope that our viewers will become more aware of all aspects of the city and have a greater appreciation for its diversity and associate New York with this, as opposed to the perception of it being a “luxury” city. We believe this is especially important today, at a time when our country is becoming increasingly polarized. We strongly believe that photography is a powerful means to foster unity among us because it captures the essence of humanity. Hopefully by showing every one of the city’s different sides, we can increase awareness of the people we live around and foster greater understanding among ourselves.

Beyond this, we want our viewers to appreciate the beauty of the city, beyond the tourist attractions that first come to mind. Being as large as it is, New York City has a large variety of different neighborhoods and locations that all have something aesthetic to offer. One thing that we’ve all learned from this class is that the city is a perfect art canvas, with forms of creative expression all around us. For those that didn’t have the privilege to take IDC, we wanted to share a little of our experience in the class by showcasing some of the art we saw around the city.